But also watching around them the emergence of all kinds of social tensions and pathologies, tensions and pathologies that are actually political but in the larger society, and not knowing how to develop a calculus of whether this state can hold out against it, to what degree it's going to try, and it turns out not to try very hard, and under what circumstances all of these visible dangers actually will coalesce into something fundamentally very threatening.

You know, one reason, it seems to me why the book took as long as it did, and I'm not suggesting it took longer than it should have, is that my sense is that you really came to know these figures.

You were a conversant with them.

This is one of the ways in which this book is so unusual.

And it's not as if your presence in the book deflects or weakens it as an historical study.

I think it actually strengthens it.

And one aspect that struck me, and I'd be curious to hear whether you were struck by this as well, is that a good many of the protagonists you speak about, Weinreich, Lev Shinsky, others, are people I thought I knew.

Not because we should be lachrymose, but because that's an essential dimension of our modern experience.

But also watching around them the emergence of all kinds of social tensions and pathologies, tensions and pathologies that are actually political but in the larger society, and not knowing how to develop a calculus of whether this state can hold out against it, to what degree it's going to try, and it turns out not to try very hard, and under what circumstances all of these visible dangers actually will coalesce into something fundamentally very threatening.

You know, one reason, it seems to me why the book took as long as it did, and I'm not suggesting it took longer than it should have, is that my sense is that you really came to know these figures.

You were a conversant with them.

This is one of the ways in which this book is so unusual.

And it's not as if your presence in the book deflects or weakens it as an historical study.

I think it actually strengthens it.

And one aspect that struck me, and I'd be curious to hear whether you were struck by this as well, is that a good many of the protagonists you speak about, Weinreich, Lev Shinsky, others, are people I thought I knew.

Not because we should be lachrymose, but because that's an essential dimension of our modern experience.

But also watching around them the emergence of all kinds of social tensions and pathologies, tensions and pathologies that are actually political but in the larger society, and not knowing how to develop a calculus of whether this state can hold out against it, to what degree it's going to try, and it turns out not to try very hard, and under what circumstances all of these visible dangers actually will coalesce into something fundamentally very threatening.

You know, one reason, it seems to me why the book took as long as it did, and I'm not suggesting it took longer than it should have, is that my sense is that you really came to know these figures.

You were a conversant with them.

This is one of the ways in which this book is so unusual.

And it's not as if your presence in the book deflects or weakens it as an historical study.

I think it actually strengthens it.

And one aspect that struck me, and I'd be curious to hear whether you were struck by this as well, is that a good many of the protagonists you speak about, Weinreich, Lev Shinsky, others, are people I thought I knew.

Not because we should be lachrymose, but because that's an essential dimension of our modern experience.

But also watching around them the emergence of all kinds of social tensions and pathologies, tensions and pathologies that are actually political but in the larger society, and not knowing how to develop a calculus of whether this state can hold out against it, to what degree it's going to try, and it turns out not to try very hard, and under what circumstances all of these visible dangers actually will coalesce into something fundamentally very threatening.

You know, one reason, it seems to me why the book took as long as it did, and I'm not suggesting it took longer than it should have, is that my sense is that you really came to know these figures.

You were a conversant with them.

This is one of the ways in which this book is so unusual.

And it's not as if your presence in the book deflects or weakens it as an historical study.

I think it actually strengthens it.

And one aspect that struck me, and I'd be curious to hear whether you were struck by this as well, is that a good many of the protagonists you speak about, Weinreich, Lev Shinsky, others, are people I thought I knew.

Not because we should be lachrymose, but because that's an essential dimension of our modern experience.